HANSHIN TIGERS VS. HOKKAIDO HAM FIGHTERS!

American baseball is an event where one goes and watches his or her favorite team from the croud and watches the game while amid friends/ talking about whatever is going on in life and sitting next to many people drinking to their hearts content. If one leans toward the passionate side of the game he/she tends to shout profane things or complain when a bad call occurs or if the other team does something good. When one observes the people watching the game they will no doubt see jerseys scattered among the croud, from both teams. Yet in Japan, while the rules of the game are the same, the experience of watching a baseball game is completely different.

I attended the Osaka kansai areas home game last week. The hanshin name comes from the sponsor which in this case is a rail line connecting kobe and Osaka. That relieved me somewhat when I looked at my ticket and saw that they were playing the Nippon hamu (Japan’s ham) team. I can’t begin to express my amusement at that name… Anyways I rode the train to the baseball stadium and upon walking in I saw the most loyal fans I have ever seen. Every single one had not just jerseys, but hats, and sox, and shoes even. Little kids had backpcks with the hanshin tiger mascot jumping out the top. One lady I saw had a towel around her neck and she wore it like a tie with a tie tack holding it in place (both the towel an the tie tack were hanshin). But that wasn’t the biggest shock, you get to your seat and the beer guys that go out and call for beer were all women with a keg strapped to their backs holding the nozzle for their customers. I had to take a picture. Along with that you see flags,and I mean full sized banners flying from the seat sections as if we were watching a jousting match in the 1300s. The fans are segregated by team so the visitors had their own section.

Once the game started whoever was up to bat had cheerleaders leading songs specifically for each player up to bat to cheer them on from the crowd. It wasn’t a huge thing in the top of the first because the away team was up to bat but I was astonished in the bottom of the inning. They way you clap at a baseball game is to first buy a set of two plastic bats that are connected to each other through a chain and then when something you like happens, you bang them together and yell. And there is a different rhythm for each player that is mentioned in a book you can buy at the door. I bought the bats but not the book so I tried to learn as best I could. As soon as the bottom of the first began the fans ALL of them were banging bats together to a rhythm and shouting for the player up to bat. In Japan there isn’t any real trash talk so the other team sat quietly watching to see what happens. They are very polite to their adversaries unlike certain rivalries in Ohio I am aware of…you only cheer for good things for your team. Such was the way the game went. During the game if one got hungry one could choose from a delightful selection of currys, yakisoba, and takoyaki. The good ole’ American hot dog only came as a corn dog. The cheering was literally universal. Everyone waited to hear what the next cheer was if thy didn’t already know it (uncommon indeed), and everyone erupted when someone got a hit or a homu run. The coolest thing was how they handled the 7^th inning stretch. Instead of everyone singing a song, they all blow up balloons. They waited until everyone has done so and then let them all fly at the same time. Its really a sight to see. The tigers ended up losing 4-2 to the ham. Not their finest hour. But all in all it was a great experience among true fans through and through.

Oh that I had been a film major…

This morning shinsuke and I got up early and went to Eigamura. Its this film studio in Kyoto that is open to the public and allows tours and explains how they do all the things they do. We met up with sara, seth, and mark. The five of us went in together. I really didn’t know what to expect but it seriously was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. They had a series of shows we could go to and we went to all of them. The whole park was set in the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) and thus had streets and objects from that time period, as well and fun movie set stuff. The first show we went to was this samurai show where the actors were outside and they had this huge battle. They first performed their show which was maybe five minutes and they had this fight scene they had rehearsed. It was awesome. But then it got even cooler. They explained some of the actions they used to make scenes. They had this scripted way of doing things and they asked for volunteers, Seth got selected to go up and act with the samurai guys, he and two kids a boy and girl. They taught some different moves like this one where both guys run up and clash swords and then stare at each other making manly grunts for like five –ten seconds…SO funny, then they back off from each other and run again and the bad guy goes for an overhead blow and the good guy gets him in the stomach in a sweeping/ slicing motion. After that the bad guy dies and the good guy gets to pose for a few seconds in victory. Well, they had the little boy go first and he was so cute! I did everything and tried to slit the bad guys stomach but could really reach that high and he got him elsewhere…I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. Then hi struck his victory pose. So awesome. Then the little girl went on and she was out for blood! She got done with the in the face manly part and was supposed to run back but she just ran forward and charged the bad guy who had tripped already and she I think just stabbed him a number of times. They saved seth for last. They announced that it would be the American vs Japanese and they slaughtered him haha. Then they re-did it and he (seth) did everything and when it came time for the killing stroke, he did so and ended with a pose/ move you’d see from a video game of the winner. It was so classic. I got the whole thing on film.

Next we went and saw this ninja play…wow…seriously SO COOL! They were all acrobats and they had this sinister old guy that had this scroll that told all the intimate details of the enemies of the Tokugawa shogunate, the heroin who pretty much kicked the crap out of all the other ninjas and even the bad guy at the end had a mission to steal that scroll. The best part of this thing was they had the cheesy sound effects to go with everything and they had lighting to go with the scnes and movie tricks…it was awesome. What was really funny was the sinister old man had this part where he came out and showed his face for the first time (up until that time he had his hair in front of his face…scary) and he did it into the front row of people. There were little kids sitting there and he must have felt like he was to scary because he went from this terrifying scary man to this really nice old man and showed the peace sign. He talked a little and interacted with the audience and then the show continued with its dramatic conclusion. It was awesome. We got to meet this famous stunt man who had acted in a number of films in his day, he was the ninja fight scene coordinator. He had been in movies with Michael Cane and some other famous people. Pretty good stuff.

After ninja we went to the ninja suvenier shop…I almost bought a ninja suit which would have been awesome for making movies with…but I was recently told that I spend money to freely so I opted not to get it. But in that store they had a solar powered flashlight. I kid you not. They also had this chance to throw shuriken (Chinese stars) at targets. I did do that, and I won a prize. Its like darts sort of but a lot cooler. We ate lunch then headed to the other side of the park and there they had a demonstration of how they film scenes and what not. They had a fight scene between a samurai and a ninja but along with that they had the set, rain, thunder and lightning, a ton of effects they used to simulate whatever they wanted. They also had day and night settings and stars etc…it was really cool. Then they showed effects like shooting an arrow down at thte samurai…the arrow was on a string and it flew down and stuck in the side post of an entry way. They also had knives and they would simulate throwing them. Both people carried the same knife and worked together on the timing and the delivery of the knife to the other person. Then choregrophy as well was included. The director gave some good examples of what he wanted in the show and then had the actors do it. You seriously felt like you were there in it, and I wished I had done that as a profession.

The next event was yes, a ½ hour POWER RANGER show. Only in Japan can you see the mighty morphin power rangers live…and it was for sure a sight to see. The work these actors had to go through in order to pull this off was fascinating. They as well were total acrobats jumping and flipping everywhere and anywhere. There were a lot of kids in the show and they seemed to really like it.

The last show was an educational show describing the use of money in the Tokugawa time, how Tokugawa period living people made fire, and the different katana’s the movies use to make shows. They have one for close ups and another for actual fight scenes that is really light and easy to use yet harmless if you hit someone.

It was a great experience all in all, and I was completely worn out afterwards. But duty called in the form of karaoke that night so shinsuke and I went…there just isn’t anything like a good session of singing your heart out to wrap up the day.

You know the week is busy when you don't have the strength or energy to sit and write for ten minutes…

This week was one such week. After the Arrow shooting day, we had two more days of holiday. The Golden Week celebration lasted until Wednesday and because it was a holiday we didn't have class until Thursday. Tsuchiya kyodai came Thursday morning and became my roommate. We had class from 8 oclock and tsuchiya sensei had us write a news article about the person next to us. I really didn’t know much about the person next to me; only that he had gone to Osaka the day before to the aquarium and to the big ferris wheel. So I wrote a news article about how he was a famous American shark charmer who could make sharks want to eat by playing a musical tune under the water. Random, I know, but fun all the same. I got a good laugh out of that and Mark and I got closer after that. Heis a funny kid. He served his mission in the Tokyo area and we are going to hit up old areas when I get back there. It will be awesome. We both served in Fussa so it will be cool to go back there and see everyone. The lesson we had was to read and write different articles and from here on out we have to write 20 articles about Japanese stuff. It will be really cool, but busy. That day we went to honno-ji (my 4^th attempt) and this time it was open! Although there was a Buddhist service going on at the same time so we really couldn’t walk the grounds without disturbing it. But the museum was open so I was happy about that. Honno-ji is a famous Shinto temple that was the place where Oda Nobunaga the first of the three unifiers of Japan in the 16^th century was forced to commit suicide. His retainer Akeche Mituhide had betrayed him after he (mituhide) had been ordered to burn some Buddhist temples housing enemy threateners. Instead he circled back around and attacked Nobunaga with 13000 men. Nobunaga then only had 100 men standing guard and they fought valiantly being lead by a man named Mori who was the last man standing during the fight trying to give Nobunaga time to escape. Nobunaga got out and made it to honno-ji temple which was a couple of blocks away and there he took his own life in same of defeat. I wrote one of my history thesis’ on Nobenaga and how without him and his determination to carry on Japan would never have been unified even with the aide and efforts of the other two they did not have his level of motivation. Anyways the museum at honno-ji had artifacts from the 12^th century that had been preserved such as at works pottery, as well as remnants of the battle that took place there; the swords of Mori and Nobunaga are kept there.

Friday class was interesting being culture class. My friend Sara and I may or may not have played checkers on her ipod touch during the lesson…but it was a good lesson. Afterwards we went to Nijo-jo The castle built by the last of the three unifiers in order to keep pressure on the Emperor (one of the ways the Shogun kept power was to control the actions of the Emperor, the word that comes most readily to mind is PUPPET.) Having been there before I told the other students most of the information I could remember. We walked down the nightengale floor (a floor designed to squeak as one walked on it to alarm the shogun of anyone’s presence) we saw where “the last samurai” was filmed (in the main room that the shogun used to have an audience with his retainers and daimyo, known as the first and second grand council rooms) then we went around the stucture of the castle. It is built with two moats surrounding it making it very hard for an attacking force to actually get to the center structure it self. Other defenses include arrow turrets and walls built and sloped so that they are always visable to the turrets and thus vulnerable to defensive action. The outer moat only has two entry paths and each of those is closed off by a gate that is reinforced wood by copper. It's about a foot thick and has a locking device that extends into the top and bottom of the gate doorway. Once you get in from that there is a long corridor-like pathway that is protected by another inner wall that also has turrets and is 25 feet high or so. Once you get into the middle doors which are of the same design as the outer doors some buildings are exposed, but the main castle is still protected by the inner moat (a 100 foot wide 20 feet deep water way) and walls 50 feet high with only 2 passageways into it also guarded by bronse/copper covered doors. Needless to say it is very tough to invade and never was captured.

After Nijo-jo we headed to the manga museum. Its this museum that has over 30,000 comic books in it and the history of how comics in Japan became so popular. It was interesting to see how they created these comics and the storylines that have come out in them. They have everything from comics about sports for both girls and boys all the way to really explicit adult only stuff. (luckily that stuff as all on the third floor so we stayed on the 2^nd floor and first.) It was interesting but not as interesting to me, although I had a funny thought. I had a poll in my head of who in my Study Abroad group would be more interested in the Manga Museum than the history of Nijo-jo. I guessed that 5 basically could leave Japan fully satisfied of their experience here after having gone and could go on living, and that the rest of us would be ok seeing it but wouldn’t really care. I was totally right. It seemed that those 5 was so excited to go there were counting down the time to leave nijo-jo. Once we got to the manga museum I left after about 1-2 hours…they would probably still be there now if they were allowed. I don't know what they did I told them I was leaving and they said ‘bye.’

One of the Fam

5/3

So today I finally stopped using teinei-go (polite language) with the family and it was a lot of fun. I felt like I belonged there and that I was welcome in their family discussion. They said the funniest things today! Fukuyama shimai was trying to explain what something was but didn’t know the English term and she looked at Asuka for the translation which she didn’t give (she is fluent in English) and she kept going into the description and for the life of her tried so hard to get everything to make sense but she couldn’t do it without this one word and Asuka finally said it afterwards, it was hysterical. She purposely held out to see how her mom would do in explaining the situation. Then her mom got her back later that night by asking her if she was planning on going jogging with me in the morning, it was really really funny.

Anyways we went to kiyomizu dera today, such a cool place hoarded with people. It has this dark tunnel you can pay a 100yen to go into, and while in there you are only led by a hand rail that turns every which way and you can’t see anything period. It goes down and up and all around and then finaly a light appears in the middle and there is the will of hotokesama, (GOD) and then it leads you out to the place you need to go to get out. Very symbolic I might add, I can see some of your heads making the connection right this minute,, eh? Eh? While we were there we met these girls from Thailand, very nice here studying engineering. They accompanied us for the duration of our stay at kiyomizu. They spoke no Japanese and a little English. It was pretty fun communicating with them. The above girl's name was Kro? the scene where im picking up that big steel thing is this tradition that if it is easy for you to pick up you must have done really good things and good luck will follow you...as long as you pay 100 yen

Then we went to Shimogamo Jinja where they had this annual arrow shooting contest from a mounted postion. They rode horses full speed towards these targets and shot them as they rode by. It was AWESOME. We got some really cool videos of it. This one guy who was in the Last Samurai for his talent in horse back riding and shooting arrows hit all three of his targets. He was very jozu. Then we ate at this spicy ramen shop. It was really good. Pretty easy day but really cool. Cant wait for tomorrow!

HOLD ON, HOLD ON! We’re on our own!

May 1 2010

So yesterday we had our first day of traveling around Kyoto. We had a lesson the first part and then went to a lot of different places. We started by going to Shimogamo Jinja. It's a very famous shrine dedicated to the gods for allowing the rivers in Kyoto to be joined (they’re routed one of the two main rivers in Kyoto back in 800ish AD and this was the place where the two rivers met.) it's a huge Shinto shrine that has numerous buildings inside it, as well as the path to the sacred mori (forest). While we were here there were two Shinto weddings taking place. It was very interesting to see them to say the least.

After that shrine we headed to the temple of 1001 buddhas. I went there with Mom and Dad when they came and picked me up but that time we were rushed so this time since we had all the time in the world, it was nice to really study and look deeper into everything.

After that we went to the old red light district…there wasn't much there (course it was 4 in the afternoon…) .

The thing was everyone had an opinion on what we should do and no one was looking out for anyone else. I was so annoyed because no one was thinking accountability. Its funny but I’m used to watching out for others. I guess the army has a way of doing that. Anyways I suggested to Dr. Lawrence that we had some type of accountability for where people were. I feel like I have to do a lot of the motivating to get decisions made. No one wanted to research getting into the Imperial Palace so guess who got it. And the other thing we were trying to get lunch and couldn't decide on anything and everyone was starving/ complaining. So finally we decided to meet up in an hour and go get whatever we wanted. That worked out pretty well. I guess its something we’ll have to work on.

WHO KNEW JAPANESE KARAOKE COULD BE SO MAGICAL?

FRIDAY 30 APRIL

They other night My host family dad decided it was time to go let out some stress. He asked me if I wanted to go with him to Karaoke. I jumped at the chance, I mean how often does one get to enjoy that type of bliss with the bishop? So we went and as luck would have it there is a karaoke place 2 blocks from our house. We get there and they have a nomihodai (all you can drink policy.) If that isn’t cool enough the drink selection was fabulous. I had a chocolate banana shake, over and over for an hour and they just kept coming. Then we get into the Karaoke room. This room was really small but big enough to have a great sound system and all the digital equipment needed to get singing. The mics were wireless and they had a ton of selections. Japanese and American famous songs. My host family dad is also the bishop of Kyoto ward and we sang great classics like Hotel California, Livin on a prayer, More than a feelin’, Hysteria by muse and Suck my kiss by Red Hot Chili Peppers. The machine had a great blend of delay, reverb and perhaps voice modulation so it sounded really good. The hour we signed up for flew by, I can’t wait to go again.

NATIONAL TREASURES IN THE ODDEST PLACES

FRIDAY 30 APRIL

Yesterday I learned that when in Kyoto, you can stumble across national treasures while shopping. We had class and went down to Kyoto Station or around there to go look for a camera for me and to eat lunch. We were on our way to an all you can eat sushi bar when we looked to the side of the road and saw a historic marker in front of a seven eleven. We all thought that was weird so we went over to it and looked and sure enough a really famous government official had been assassinated there…who knew. He had been one of the main reformers of the Tokugawa shogunate (wanting to change to a more modern style of government, but alas died there in the street.) I thought it was rather funny that the property had been bought by seven eleven and his memory is now commemorated with the sound of Irashaimase! (The welcome everyone and anyone gets with entering a convenient store in Japan) If the story ended there it would still be good, but wait, there’s more! Sushi was amazing, on a little track system that circled the room so you can pick whatever you want from the conveyor belt. You don't even have to order! It just comes to you! …and yes we ate until our hearts content. Afterwards we looked around and saw many stores so we window shopped for awhile. I came across a couple of Japanese rock shops (selling guitars basses etc not rock collections) so naturally I went inside of a bit. This one had four floors to it but was really narrow so it was about the size of a medium range guitar shop. They had it all though. Mesa Boogie, Orange, Fender, Gibson, It was fun to go there. It was a lot more expensive there then back at home. Anyways after spending a couple of minutes in that store we kept moving on. In Kyoto there are historical temples and shrines everywhere intertwined with modern-day shops and the like. I just happened to walk into Honno-ji, the temple where in 1582 Oda Nobunaga, the first of the three great unifiers of Japan was burned alive by one of his own Akechi Mitsuhide. He is still there, there is a grave and everything on the property along with a museum dedicated to his memory and a ton of artifacts from that time period. This may not be significant to most of you, however when I took Hist 343 ancient to pre-modern Japanese, my thesis for the end of the semester 10 pages paper was how if Nobunaga had not come to power, the very unification of Japan may not have been possible. I then went on to explain how it took someone of his strength to get the ball rolling and once it was moving his successors Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa were able to complete it. So I had done a lot of research on this guy and there he literally was…ashes and all in front of me. As murphy’s law would have it, I didn't have a camera yet, but you better believe I am going back to take pictures and go through the museum.